Did anyone else who grew up in a house with carpeted floors like to rub their hands across the carpet very fast and feel how simultaneously smooth and tingly they felt afterwards?
I had to go unsubscribe from one of the streaming services—Glorp, I think, or maybe Jarbo—because I had used a free trial to watch the first two #Mariners games of the #ALCS.
First, I went to my TV's settings, but couldn't find an unsubscribe option, so I logged into my Treepy account on my desktop. But the unsubscribe option wasn't there, so I was redirected back to Roku, where I finally found the option to "turn off auto-renew". Not "cancel", though. "Turn off auto-renew."
And, it seems straightforward enough, and perhaps it is, but trying to navigate corporate websites in 2025 feels a bit like negotiating with a powerful and tricky genie. I'm staring down these subscription pages, trying to ensure I've done the right things so that I'm not going to get charged ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND NINETY-NINE CENTS in 24 hours.
Even when companies aren't using dark patterns, the general proliferation of dark patterns just leaves me jumpy and suspicious. So glad it's the future.
However, Google's latest fuckery with developer verification, and the apparent death knell it represents for F-Droid, makes me uncertain. I don't have the technical understanding of how the pieces fit together with alternative versions of Android.
Can someone more knowledgeable than me weigh in here? How is Google's developer verification for Android likely to affect alternative Android versions like /e/OS?
It seems to be using Google Mobile Services which eOS does not use.
I would still suggest you wait a bit. Perhaps you could contact eOS or Murena for clarification, if it does not affect them they should be happy to confirm it to a potential customer.
The opening paragraph of this essay is so sharp it makes me jealous. Just trying to corral the words to describe what I like about it feels like I'm chasing a gaggle of runaway toddlers on trikes, while Burneko launches his motorcycle off a ramp, winks, and flips me off.
The first sentence is just such a clean, economical expression of contempt, and it sets the tone for the whole piece. Confident, clever writing like that always makes me think of Douglas Adams. If I have any writing goals, it's to write like that.
Grave editorial failure only seldom can be located in something as precise as a single word choice. The following block-quoted sentence, from a Thursday article by New York Times technology reporter Kevin Roose, contains one, and it feels like journa…
I am adept at assembling flat-pack furniture. I have good enough visual-spatial reasoning, and I pay attention to details in the instructions enough that I'm rarely caught flat-footed.
And with that said, I believe that somehow, the design of IKEA furniture acts as arcane DRM, because there is there is no way on this green planet that even the most talented human being can assemble a thirdhand IKEA bed without wanting to scream for days.
@Spencer I feel a strong urge to defend IKEA furniture, which instructions and hardware have always made assembly way easier than any other flat-pack furniture brand I've ever had the displeasure of encountering.
It feels to me that the problem here is in "thirdhand". As a counterpoint to my earlier praise, IKEA furniture does not like being unassembled and reassembled including because the materials are fragile (hence the price). I've had an IKEA bed that somehow survived a couple moves, but not in the same shape each time.
Yes, I agree. I have not had issues with IKEA furniture that I assembled and disassembled myself.
That was my point here: I can assemble it fine from the store, but if someone who wasn't me had their mitts on it beforehand, god only knows what kluges they've employed or how they've mangled the thing due to misreading the instructions.
I'm sure it's exacerbated by my filter bubbles (both algorithmic and organic), but my god, it sure feels like neo-Luddism and a spirit of humane tech is in the air right now.
Now that I'm actually getting into baseball, I find myself really wishing #blaseball hadn't imploded. The idea of baseball + ridiculous reality-bending shenanigans is great, especially when delivered in the dry factual form of a play-by-play.
The ESPN commentary on today's #Mariners game is absolutely horrendous.
They spent almost the entirety of Josh Naylor's at-bat cut away to the announcers booth where the Astros mascot was bringing them food. Because who wants to watch the ballgame, am I right? 🙄
I missed the end of the #Mariners game last night due to extreme sleepiness, but it was the middle of the 11th when I went to bed and things weren't looking good.
So when R came to bed, I asked, half-asleep and pessimistically, if we had lost.
@Spencer Huh, I didn’t take you to be a sportsball person. Are you from Seattle or is it the closest MLB team to you geographically? Or something else entirely?
I wasn't until this summer. My wife, who is from Seattle, is a self-described fair-weather fan. I watched a game with her a couple months ago and had enough fun that I got into it.
@Spencer I had fun at the New York Yankees game I went to, and at the Brooklyn Cyclones. I’ve been to a Brooklyn Nets and I’ve enjoyed it too. I’m less inclined to watch on TV as we don’t have cable anyway, but on the other I try to follow Dota 2 esports tournaments.
The only things I won’t watch is American football and cricket. First is too much downtime vs playtime, and I haven’t been able to figure out the rules for the latter.
Got a new post up on the (recently revamped) blog! Inspired by Rob Hopkins' work on imagining futures, I wrote a short little entry from a future where we managed to reclaim our digital lives.
As usual, the big tech moguls and eggheads occupy a fantasy world of Pure Reason, where everything is solvable without sacrifice if the right people just think about it enough.
I’m constantly amused by the idea that we will invent AGI and AI will solve all of our problems. We don’t need AGI to solve our problems, even ChatGPT can already tell us obvious solutions to our current problems.
We already have good answers on how to reduce gun violence, infant mortality or climate change. The problem is too many people have a vested interest in the problems being unsolved. It isn’t because we haven’t invented smarter than human AI. When we do, we’ll ignore it too.
In seems to me that many of us are concerned about beating movies, solving them before others and then being afraid to get the “what was it really about?” question wrong in front of judgmental peers. But ultimately, I believe that’s a disservice to film analysis, and to the films themselves. We’ve weaponized the idea of being right or wrong about movies, and it’s a boring state to be in. There’s no harm done in taking an educated analytical swing in good-faith, because every piece of art is about something, many things, and that’s what keeps art alive.
I haven't seen the film yet, but I am very appreciative of this reviewer's push for personal engagement with texts.
Audiences are arguing over the meaning (or lack thereof) behind Zach Cregger's horror hit — but the truth is there's no such thing as a correct answer when it comes to the film.
Just ate a fresh peach the only way one should be eaten: over the sink, juice dripping over my fingers, making borderline obscene little noises involuntarily.
Every summer, our neighborhood association puts on a large "forest festival" in a local park. We went, for the third year in a row, with the Goblin today, and we never went more than a couple minutes without saying hi to someone we knew.
Booths and booths of local artists sharing their work. Places for kids to play different musical instruments. Live music and presentations on two different stages.
The future I want has more of this. When our needs are taken care of, when we can all feed and clothe and house our families with time to spare, I want to gather under the trees every few weeks and peruse the beautiful, quirky things my neighbors have made.
Looking for options for a dedicated portable audio player so I can break my smartphone's hold on me, I remembered I had an old Pixel 2 in my nightstand, and I booted it up.
It's amazing how much nicer a smaller device feels—and my daily phone, a Pixel 5a, is still "small" by modern standards! I can see more of the outside world around the periphery of the Pixel 2. It fits in my hand like a tool; it serves me, rather than the other way around.
Managed to kill my phone's display in exactly the same way I did two and a half years ago: by dropping it. Even happened in the exact same spot in the house.
And this is giving me the opportunity to reexamine what, exactly, I want from a personal electronic device.
During my hiatus, the Goblin and I had a perfect adventure picking blueberries, then I got to pull off my very first canning adventure: blueberry spice jam!
For my first canning attempt ever, I wasn't gonna fuck with recipes at all. But this did turn out much sweeter than I'd like, such that it almost overpowers the flavor of the fruit. That's what I wanted to preserve in the first place! C'mon! 😆
Started listening to a podcast episode today at the recommendation of @Wally, featuring Rob Hopkins. Hopkins' upcoming book is How to Fall in Love with the Future, and his thesis seems to be that (1) in order to make the kind of drastic change we need to get out of this planet-wide death spiral, we need a felt, personal connection with beautiful futures, and (2) we can get there by deliberately engaging our brains' storytelling drives.
This is not necessarily a foreign pair of thoughts to me; in my day job as a therapist, I frequently see how destructive and paralyzing it is to simply have no vision of a future that matters to you.
So I tried something in my journal: I wrote a journal entry from 10 years in the future, after some things had gone right.
It was profound. Writing it felt both encouraging and clarifying, like I was finally admitting to myself/the world that a better future could come, if we work for it. I found, as I wrote, that declar
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Started listening to a podcast episode today at the recommendation of @Wally, featuring Rob Hopkins. Hopkins' upcoming book is How to Fall in Love with the Future, and his thesis seems to be that (1) in order to make the kind of drastic change we need to get out of this planet-wide death spiral, we need a felt, personal connection with beautiful futures, and (2) we can get there by deliberately engaging our brains' storytelling drives.
This is not necessarily a foreign pair of thoughts to me; in my day job as a therapist, I frequently see how destructive and paralyzing it is to simply have no vision of a future that matters to you.
So I tried something in my journal: I wrote a journal entry from 10 years in the future, after some things had gone right.
It was profound. Writing it felt both encouraging and clarifying, like I was finally admitting to myself/the world that a better future could come, if we work for it. I found, as I wrote, that declaring certain outcomes that 2025 Spencer wants did, in fact, happen naturally prompted my brain to tell a story about how.
I really encourage the exercise. Go, spend some time talking to yourself from the future where things went right. What is in that future that you love?
Sage Christie's song "Moss in Your Name" caps off their album ice olation, an album about and written during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a touching reflection on those we lost, and I frequently find myself tearing up when listening, no matter how many times I've heard it.
The whole album points out to me that I've seen very little art about the pandemic. I'm sure it's out there, but it hasn't crossed my bow.
The good news is that it's fermenting happily! After a week, the swing-top bottles are making a hearty pop each day when I burp them. I'll probably give them a few days longer to really dry out. They're not quite as tasty right now as I'd like—bubbly, but not terribly fruity, and mostly taste like sweet. Fingers crossed that as they get drier, the tart flavors of the fruit will pop a little more.
My ginger bug is also doing remarkably well, which is confusing to me because I really don't quite know how to read it yet.
I'm feeding it ginger and sugar every day or two, stirring vigorously, and occasionally adding a bit more tap water, and it seems... happy? It's still quite lively after what must have been at least a couple months. I was sure I was going to kill this one too, but somehow it's still alive.
My brain wants to know, with rigorous precision, how this thing is working and what I'm doing right, but I think I'm at a stage in my relationship with this culture where that type of clarity isn't available to me yet. Perhaps I need to sit in the mystery a little longer and let the intuition develop.
The carbonation today was vigorous enough to blow the lids back when I burped the bottles, so I think these are done.
And yeah, with a little more time, they're quite nice. The flavor is still somewhat subtle, but it's gently tart and fruity, with excellent fizz and a beautiful color.
This is the form that the United States Department of the Interior is using to collect feedback about "any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans" in national parks.
As a second-grader, I despised recess. Not because I enjoyed class — it was boring and tedious, hemmed in by schedules and busywork — but rather because I was lonely. Some people don’t unders…
OpenAI is featuring a "Looksmaxxing GPT" that provides "PSL ratings" for photos. It will rate people as "subhuman", and advise men to get invasive procedures like jaw surgery to "increase their sexual market value" among women, who it describes as "hypergamous by nature".
"PSL" is short for "PUAhate Sluthate Lookism", a group of three manosphere/incel communities. PUAHate came to public attention after Elliot Rodger's 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, when it came out that he frequented the platform to talk about his "incel" status.
After uploading a photo, this GPT gives ratings like "Subhuman", "Low Normie / High Subhuman Borderline (White)", or "high-tier normie, borderline Chadlite".
It proactively offers to provide "hardmaxxing" (medical interventions like plastic surgery) or "softmaxxing" advice (grooming, fitness training, etc).
Friends! Tell me about indie #TTRPG hidden gems. I've been watching a lot of Quinns Quest and Cozy RPG Reviews, as well as reading the design thoughts of Jay Dragon, and I just want to gobble up a bunch of excellent, innovative games.
So I haven't watched much of QQ or any of the other stuff you linked, but a quick glance tells me you prolly already know about Starforged, which is on my list to recommend to people. I've only played a handful of sessions (solo), but I keep returning to it when I have time.
Depending on where you've spent time in TTRPG circles Apocalypse World may or may not be considered a gem that is hidden. But I recommend it anyway, especially for folks who like a story and have only played more mainstream stuff like Pathfinder, GURPS, or FATE.
My absolute favorite to point people to, though, is Swords without Master by @Epidiah. worldswithoutmaster.com/swords…. It uses dice in a very novel way compared to most games most people have played and the character sheet is also unlike anything most folks have played. The reincorporation mechanic is surprisingly deft at making meaning out of a session. It's perfect for zero-prep one-shots, but a 4-6 session arc I played with some folks is, to this day, the most emotionally satisfying experience I've had at the table.
These are more like "required reading" than "hidden gems":
- Lady Blackbird - Primetime Adventures - My Life With Master - Cortex Prime - Fiasco - Sorcerer - Blades in the Dark - Wushu: the Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying - Index Card RPG - Burning Wheel - Mechanical Oryx - 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars - Belly of the Beast - Anima Prime - The Spire - Trophy - Legacy: Life Among the Ruins - Monsters & Magic - Ars Magica - Amber Diceless Roleplaying
Interesting! I recognize some of these, like Blades in the Dark, Fiasco, and The Spire, but not all. Mind sharing what you love about a couple of them?
Many advance the “technology” of RPGs, solving common problems that show up at the table, in a new way.
Many contain mechanical procedures for GMs, instead of vague advice on the “art” of running a game.
Some are examples of “coherency”, where the game has an opinion of what it is trying to do, and is laser focused on making that happen at the table, removing everything that doesn't do that.
One is only 200 words, but uses mechanical incentives better than any game before 2000.
Really great games are often built around encoding some key insight about how RPGs work into play. Some on this list do that.
Most games are lucky to have one such insight. One game not on my list, Apocalypse World, has at least three, which is why it took over indie gaming for a while.
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